The band wore tails and tank-top T shirts and stood knee-deep in water before a crowd of 600 first-nighters. It was all part of the premiere puffery for The Ritz, the new movie based on Terrence McNally's Broadway comedy, which opened last week in New York. The film, set in a gay hotel-bathhouse, stars Jack Weston, Jerry Stiller and Rita Moreno, who created the party's splashiest scene when she hopped onto an island pedestal in the pool. "The photographers were just dying for me to fall in the water, but for that I get paid lots and lots of money," joked Moreno afterward. If she escaped a watery fate, Moreno was less lucky with some of her more ardent fans. "There was a man with a polyester suit and Instamatic camera who just draped himself all over me," she recalled. "I felt like I was being surrounded by a Baggie."

And now from Hollywood ... The Melvin Dummar Story! Melvin Dummar? Isn't he that Utah gas station owner who says he gave Howard Hughes a ride one day, and then turned up as a beneficiary in one of the late industrialist's alleged wills? The same. Producer Art Linson has signed up Oscar-Winning Scriptwriter Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and says he hopes to start filming Dummar's life story later this year. "They're already three weeks behind schedule," grumbles Melvin, who had volunteered to play himself on the screen. Instead, he will serve as a technical consultant and possibly one of the film's bit-players. Cautions Dummar: "It's not gonna be no X-rated movie or anything."

They are not quite ready for speaking parts, but two show-business newcomers made their camera debuts last week. Appearing for the first time in Los Angeles: Richard Francisco Thomas, first son of that bright-eyed doer of good deeds on The Waltons TV show, Richard Thomas, and Wife Alma, a former grade-school teacher. "I was expecting a girl," said Dad, adding that he would probably keep trying. At the same time, in London, Jason Lawson took his first bow as well. He is the son of Actor Leigh Lawson and former Disney Pollyanna Hayley Mills, who is still awaiting her divorce from British Film Producer Roy Boulting. "I feel married both emotionally and physically to Leigh," said Hayley, "and that is what is most important."

The last time Liz Taylor sang onscreen was in a 1948 musical called A Date with Judy. But game as ever, she turned up at a London recording studio last week and began warbling for her movie role in Composer Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music. Unfortunately, Liz's first rehearsal with Leading Man Robert Stephens was less harmonious. The actor was fired from the cast and told that Taylor had cited poor "chemistry" between the two as the reason. "Bad chemistry?" retorted Stephens. "We're actors, not pharmacists." Taylor, meanwhile, sang a different song about Stephens' dismissal. "The unit manager was the one who spoke to him. If I find out he has put the blame on me, there will be one unit manager less." Now for her next number...

Shorn like Samson of his power, Congressman Wayne Hays, 65, decided to head for the exits last week. "With a heavy heart," the Ohio Democrat announced his withdrawal from the race for a 15th term in the House. The Delilah in his downfall was, of course, Elizabeth Ray, 33, who disclosed last May that she had been kept on the Congressman's payroll as a clerk but had served mostly as his mistress. In June, Hays entered a hospital in Barnesville, Ohio, suffering from an overdose of drugs, and shortly thereafter he was stripped of his chairmanship of the House Administration Committee. Now facing probes by the FBI and a federal grand jury, plus a hearing before the House Ethics Committee, which had planned to call Ray as a witness, the Congressman has elected to retire when his term expires next January. Said he: "I don't want to give that woman another chance to make an appearance."

A day in bed, plus some hot packs and massage for her ailing back, was enough to put First Lady Betty Ford back on her feet and on her way to New York last week. The occasion: the start of a two-week tribute to Composer Duke Ellington by the Alvin Ailey modern dance company. Ford, who once studied with Martha Graham, may have lost a few moves over the years, but obviously none of her enthusiasm. Backstage the First Lady partnered with Dancer Judith Jamison for a few smooth steps, then confided: "I still practice my ballet exercises in a large bathroom with a lot of mirrors when nobody is looking."

"It might fizzle, and I don't want to be connected with anything that fizzles," drawls Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Norland Sanders, 86, fearful that a musical version of his life might prove to be a turkey. So Sanders, whose own career fizzled until 1956, when he launched the first of his "finger lickin' good" chicken eateries, has not invested any money in Kentucky Lucky, a new stage show scheduled for a fall debut. Conceived by Writer James Chappin and directed by Jerry Adler (My Fair Lady), the show will tell the colonel's story in song and dance. Sanders doubts that it will help chicken sales, however. "If it was just another commercial," he explains, "it wouldn't be worth seeing."

"I have played five Macbeths, three Mark Antonys, one El Cid, a cardinal and three Presidents," intoned Actor Charlton Heston. "But never have I played such a role where my own equipment served me so little." Heston's latest brush with the big boys is as King Henry VIII in Director Richard Fleischer's film The Prince and the Pauper. The actor needed plastic in his makeup plus padding on his body to effect the appropriate regal bearing. "My eyes are deep set; his were close to the surface," observed Heston. "My face is angular; his was square. My mouth is large; his was small. My nose is angular and broken; his was square and short." The makeup worked just fine in the end, noted the actor, "but we really had a great deal of distance to go."

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